Batteries represent about $36 billion in revenues today and are expected to grow to more than $50 billion over the next five or so years, with rechargeable batteries leading the way. That’s why the federal government, the states, and the private sector are pouring capital into advanced battery and energy storage technology and manufacturing. And that helps explain the 27 deals and more than $500 million that VCs in this country have invested in batteries since the beginning of 2008. And, because the MIT technology is based on an existing type of battery, it might be able to reach the commercial marketplace faster than one made of a different material. Grove believes that Intel can enter the vehicle business through the manufacture of batteries and that GE can play a different&mdashbut equally significant&mdashrole by manufacturing the cars themselves.

Stocks got slammed in extremely light trading Thursday following the employment report, which revealed more weakness for job trends ahead of the long July 4 holiday weekend. For June, nonfarm payrolls fell 467,000, much worse than the 358,000 job-loss figure that the markets were looking for, and the unemployment rate rose to 9. Action Economics said the report was weaker than expected due to a drop in the workweek to a new low of 33. Treasuries moved higher in price, sending yields lower in the wake of the employment report and “reinsterted some fresh qualms about the recovery,” said Action Economics. Also, China’s Vice Foreign Minister says that the USD is the main global reserve currency, in comments reported on Reuters this session, with the minister stating that he has not heard of the China request for a reserve currency debate. Next week, the bond market will get a flood of supply as the Treasury could sell over $170 billion in bills, notes, bonds, and TIPS (assuming a $35 billion 4-week bill auction), says Action Economics.

After GM pulled out of the deal, Toyota said cryptically only that &quotthe economic and business environment surrounding Toyota is also extremely severe, and so this decision by GM makes the situation even more difficult for Toyota. The plant combines the higher wages of a United Auto Workers labor contract (brought to the venture courtesy of GM) with Toyota’s cultural aversion to layoffs. Toyota is also on the hook for pension and health-care costs for some of the factory’s retirees and current workforce, which is older than the workers at many of Toyota’s North American plants. Over the years, NUMMI’s union workers have negotiated benefits that are closer to the UAW master contract that became so expensive for the Big Three. The fate of NUMMI may be one of the first big decisions for Akio Toyoda , the founding-family scion and new CEO.

Such a performance is reminiscent of the category’s pre-2008 levels when investors flocked to investments in countries like China and India. Liquidity — the idea that investors can build a position and then sell it when they want — is often a problem especially in smaller emerging economies. An alternative to an index fund is to pay for a managed offering in order to gain access to a manager who knows the ins and outs of overseas investing. In addition, they also had to beat the year-to-date performance of the typical international fund, which, according to Lipper, stands at 14.

He has been a vocal critic of the H-1B visa program for skilled immigrants since the mid-1990s, and now maintains a Web page and e-mail listserv discussing offshoring and the H-1B visa program, which he calls a &quotsham. Still others point to mounting evidence of fraud in the program and a lack of government oversight. Some of his most influential academic work includes a fall 2003 article in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform on the H-1B work visa called &quotOn the Need for Reform of the H-1B Nonimmigrant Work Visa in Computer-Related Occupations. Matloff posts opinionated blog entries on the Web site of Numbers USA, a group calling for lower levels of immigration.

The current crisis already has given us a glimpse of the damage that can be done by financial institutions operating beyond the reach of U. A recent BusinessWeek story, “The Perils of Global Banking,” ( BW—May 18 ) described in detail how Lehman Brothers was able to issue $35 billion in complex bonds from a small office in Amsterdam—bonds which might have raised a lot more questions if they had been issued in the U. Globalization also makes it more difficult to figure out which government will lay out the big bucks to support a mammoth financial institution in the event of a crisis. In a section on international cooperation, the report calls for “further work on the feasibility and desirability of moving towards the development of methods for allocating the financial burden associated with the failure of large, multinational financial firms. In theory, what’s needed is a global board with the power in a crisis to decide how much each country will contribute to financial bailouts and guarantees.

This past February I reported in a BusinessWeek column that the biggest threat to the recovery of our economy was going to be the baby boomers’ severely reduced spending habits. The boomers obviously had slashed their spending to the bone in response to the past few years’ repeated disasters on (and by) Wall Street. The other big factor that doesn’t favor a substantial resumption of car sales anytime soon is that millions of Americans have lost their credit standing in the massive wave of foreclosures and defaults on credit cards and auto loans. Given that the nation’s economic success has long been built on Americans’ personal and business mobility, the positive news is that there are nearly 250 million cars, trucks, and SUVs on the road in this country.

For starters, the agency is considering dividing its attorneys into practice areas, with some agents specializing in complex subjects such as collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps, making it more difficult for complex scams to fly under the radar. It’s also contemplating removing a layer of management from its regional offices&mdashan investigation must be approved by four managers before it goes to the national office&mdashand reassigning those lawyers to investigations in order to have more boots on the ground. These private pools of cash were allowed to operate without oversight because it was assumed that the wealthy were sophisticated enough to not need protection. The SEC can’t catch a Ponzi if it doesn’t know it exists, even when there’s a red flag, as in the case of Texas billionaire Allen Stanford’s alleged fraud . But even so, some advisers notice their clients slipping back into the sort of habits that got Madoff investors in trouble in the first place. Peter Turecek, a senior managing director at risk-consulting firm Kroll , says people are desperate to make back the money they lost in the past 18 months.

T ) will begin mass-producing an electric vehicle , becoming the first major carmaker in the world to do so. The car, which runs 160 kilometers on a charge, will be available to Japanese consumers in the coming months. Nissan Motor ( NSANY ) will release its first model in 2010 and plans to start production in the U. China’s BYD Auto , which has been selling a plug-in gas-electric hybrid car to businesses since December, aims this year to release an electric vehicle that can go 300km to 400km when charged. In mobile phones, laptops, and other portable gadgets, thermal runaway can occur in 1 of every 5 million to 10 million cells, says Brian Barnett, a battery expert at technology firm Tiax in Cambridge, Mass.

In this post, I would like to share a more comprehensive version of my ideas on how to make a positive difference when you do not have direct line authority. Every decision that affects our lives will be made by the person who has the power to make that decision, not the &quotright&quot person or the &quotsmartest&quot person or the &quotbest&quot person. In life you have to accept the fact that decision-makers make decisions—and that you are not always the decision-maker. While the importance of taking responsibility may seem obvious in external sales, an amazing number of people in large corporations spend countless hours blaming management for not buying their ideas. It is barbarian arrogance to assume that the layman can or should make the effort to understand the specialist.